It must be something about driving on the wrong side of the road

Washington Times:

A Space Age gadget that's supposed to make getting from point A to point B a dream is becoming a nightmare for many British motorists, who use it only to end up driving down railroad tracks, crashing into bridges or stuck in desolate, muddy fields.

Satellite navigation systems, known as SatNavs in Europe and GPS (global positioning systems) in the United States, are designed to take the stress out of motoring and to get you where you want to go — on time and, it is thought, without losing your way.

So popular have SatNavs become, and so persuasive the claims, that some 2.3 million of them, worth $815 million, were sold last year in Britain alone.

They are propped up on dashboards, leading drivers to fun, work or whatever their destinations, according to the market research organization GfK.

But alas, it seems SatNavs are not totally in touch with the realities of the British landscape, dotted with thousands of ancient villages, narrow and winding lanes, marshy fields, unmarked streams and low bridges dating to the 19th century.

The result is that the gadgets are leading some drivers astray, some of them bewilderingly so.

One SatNav blunder sent army tanks and gun carriers down a tiny lane as often as seven times a week in the picturesque village of Donnington, in England's Midlands.

The trouble was, the soldiers were using their SatNavs to get to their barracks, also named Donnington, 15 miles away.

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Far more worrisome is the claim by furious railroad officials that SatNavs are causing upward of $20 million a year in damages by steering cars and huge trucks onto as many as 2,000 railroad bridges a year across the countryside.

Three of those bridges are within a one-mile radius of the east England town of Grantham — and were struck by motor vehicles 62 times last year alone.

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Meanwhile, SatNavs continue getting blamed for directing huge, tractor-trailer trucks down wee country lanes, or suggesting routes that persuade motorists to drive into swollen streams or fields where mud quickly swallows tires.

SatNavs sometimes show a shortcut where none exists, as one truck driver discovered when following instructions landed him in a muddy field near the west England hamlet of Lansdown. He was trapped in his cab for four days.

Villagers supplied food and water until he could be freed.

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Even ancient castles are not spared.

The gadgets are blamed for guiding heavy traffic into the sides of a Roman fortification in Pevensey, southern England, causing the 1,800-year-old structure's foundations to crumble.

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A few years ago I read about the problems Germans were having because they would not wait for the intersection to execute the orders to turn. The Brit problem appears to be one of software programing. Then again, it could be caused by everyone driving on the wrong side of the road.